Our Reading Escapade! Oh the urgency!

Reading Robert Dessaix's collection of short works And So Forth is an intellectually titillating and indulgent experience for me. Browsing the shelves of a bookshop that I often come out of empty-handed, I was surprised to discover a beautiful hardcover edition of this Dessaix gem. Deliberating due to dollar dramas, I bought it anyway because I suspect it may now be out of print.

Turns out, on the train ride home from work today, that it was a judicious purchase. One of his essays 'The Love List' resonated with me - as he urges the reader (us crazy bibliophiles) not to lust after a year of reading bliss. He talks about ever bibliophile's fantasy - time out where we can retire to say Patmos or our own reading haven to tear through those to-be-read stacks.



Dessaix is an exquisite Australian author and essayist. How true is his encouragment to pursue our own reading impetus and intensity:

'to acknowledge that you're doing this out of love -- don't be put off, don't be made anxious by people who press their own loves on you, amazed that you're not instantly seduced. What! they'll exclaim, you've never read Margaret Mead or Roland Barthes or Janet Frame or Dante? No you haven't, and possibly never will and in the grand scheme of things it simply doesn't matter'

As a guilty blogger who laments her lapse in posting, this validates the ebb and flow of my reading and reflecting. Recently, I've read some wonderful books that I'll have to share. I'm bad. I haven't blogged books. I'll never read 'the best book of your life' that I told a customer I'd sink my teeth into it. But really, does it matter?

Recap

Jam-packed full of well-dressed bibliophiles, the literary nightclub wasn’t what we had expected. Patrick Neate hosted the event, introducing a series of readers like Sam Wagan-Watson (Aboriginal poet) and Anthony Swofford (Jarhead etc). In between, people were supposed to take advantage of the bar and mingle. There was an older crowd. At about 10pm, and mid-way through a live singer’s performance (how rude!) the people started to head home. L and I have ordered a copy of Watson’s book and I will post up some of his clever work soon.

Uni is back. Procrastination is the temptress once again. This semester I’m doing a Victorian Lit course, Ecotexts/Nature and Technology in Writing, an Education unit and a random history unit. In terms of new faces, I sat next to a girl in education, who asked me what indoctrination meant. She also admitted that she doesn’t want to be a teacher. Come again? Surely an arts degree, and then possibly a dip-ed on top would a better pathway if you couldn’t yet envisage yourself teaching.

Reading. Bumping along on the public transport system, I devoured a gorgeous little Korean novel sent my way by Bybee. It deserves its own pocket of cyberspace (a term coined in Gibson’s Neuromancer , so I learnt in Ecotexts). I will blog it tomorrow. Yes I will. This week I must finish All The Pretty Horses . Also, I’m going to sink myself into the acerbic Edwardian wit of Hector Hugo Munro.

Lackadaisical Lady

The last week has been one of reading paralysis. Like the inevitable dilemma of the ice-cream store, I have the problem of Too Much Choice. The days are dissolving as the university semester fast approaches. The lovely blogger Bybee has sent me a Korean delight, The Other Side of Dark Remembrance by Lee Kyun-Young. I look forward to dipping into the ‘mundane yet confused life of a metropolitan salaried man.’ I also *have* to read McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses because someone gave it to me in my philosophy class last semester. And my bookish expectations tell me that I’ll be galloping through the rest of the Border trilogy after reading the first offering.

I’m reading Jay Rubin’s biography of Murakami entitled Haruki Murakami and the Music of Words. The title notes the musical metaphors that infuse Murakami’s works. Having a keen interest in music, Murakami managed a jazz bar, where he indulged his penchant for Western literature, reading voraciously when he could. The biography captures the banality of Murakami’s career changing moment of epiphany. Beer-in-hand at a baseball game, the sun shining down, he decided he could write a novel at the age of 29. Murakami’s upbeat novels reflect the tempo of modernity. Indeed Murakami’s plots have fluidity, taking different courses of action, in rifts and fugues of improvised drama. Murakami actively disliked Yukio Mishima (p15). It’s interesting that although Murakami highlights his desire to avoid the Japanese condition, his novels have nuances and ideas that aren’t inherent in Western literature. Notably in Norwegian Wood, there seems to be a consciousness of a debt for happiness, and the sense of death as a live and pervasive presence.

In regards to my reading regime, I need a solid plan of attack. The three books I’ve just mentioned I will knock down. I also hope to review Mishima’s Spring Snow, which I finished recently. Has anyone else read this gorgeous book, or the others in the Sea of Fertility tetralogy? Tomorrow, I’ll head into uni to check out the course book offerings. One of my units is Victorian Literature, which will inevitably feature chunksters. I’m doing another course on nature and writing, which looks intriguing. Looks like a fun semester!